The present invention relates to apparatus for collecting a projectile such as a tennis ball and launching it through the air.
As the game of tennis becomes more and more popular, not only are more persons taking up the sport, but those engaged in the sport are trying to improve the quality of their game. Such improvement ordinarily entails practice, and it has been found that a useful adjunct to such practice is a machine which expels the tennis ball in a constant and repeatable fachion so that the player can practice one shot continuously. With such a machine the player can practice one particular shot until he has it mastered, and then proceed to practice other shots.
A variety of tennis ball practice machines are known in the prior art. Many of these machines operate basically on the principle illustrated in the patent to Horvath, U.S. Pat. No. 3,584,614. Such machines have a raised hopper into which a plurality of tennis balls can be inserted, and the tennis balls are gravity fed from the hopper to a pressurized air chamber which launches the balls individually. While this type of device does provide a usable practice machine, it only launches the tennis balls and is not capable of collecting them. The hopper must be raised above the ground so that the tennis balls can be gravity fed to the launching apparatus, and the machine is incapable of retrieving the balls at ground level. After the supply of tennis balls in the hopper is depleted, they must be picked up by the player and reinserted in the hopper in order for his practice to continue.